1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic playing apparatus for use in an electronic musical instrument, such as a synthesizer, an electronic piano or an electronic Organ.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An electronic musical instrument generally has an automatic playing apparatus incorporated therein. When a player does not play the electronic musical instrument, therefore, a predetermined demonstration (hereafter referred to simply as "demo") is played by the automatic playing apparatus.
In order to play such a demo, demo data in a predetermined format, corresponding to a given piece of music, is previously stored in a read only memory (hereafter referred to as "ROM"), and then is read piece by piece to generate musical tones.
Demo data to be used in a conventional automatic playing apparatus has multiple pieces of note data consisting of the minimum information necessary for tone generation.
The piece of note data in demo data consists of, for example, a key number, a step time, a gate time, a TAG and a velocity.
The "key number" corresponds to a number given to each key on a keyboard, and is used to specify a tone pitch. The "step time" indicates the time length from a key-ON time for the previous note data to a key-ON time for the current note data, and is used to specify a tone-ON timing.
The "gate time" indicates the time length from a key-ON time to a key-OFF time. The "velocity" is data for specifying the key-operation speed or key-hitting strength, and serves to indicate the strength of a tone to be generated. The "TAG", data relating to a playing pattern, is used to alter the rhythm.
To play a demonstration, the demo data, or a group of note data including the above-described elements, is read out from the ROM and supplied to a tone preparing circuit (tone generator), so that a predetermined piece of music is automatically played.
When the demo data is read out from the beginning to the end to generate the associated musical tones, playing a demo of one music piece is then completed. When the demo of one music piece is ended, the demo data may be sequentially read again from the beginning to generate the musical tones, thereby ensuring repetitive playing of the same music.
Such conventional demo playing is however monotonous because a single piece of music is repetitively played with the same timbre and at the same tempo, causing listeners to be bored.
It should be understood that music creates a certain image in the mind of the listener. Of course, the same music may create different mental images in the minds of different listeners. However, the same piece of music, if re-played the same way over and over, will create the same image over and over for each listener if the effects of boredom are discounted.